


You Knew Then

by justacitygirlbornandraisedinwhoops



Category: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain, Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, Sick Fic, sawyerberry is heavily implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 09:41:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20890034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justacitygirlbornandraisedinwhoops/pseuds/justacitygirlbornandraisedinwhoops
Summary: It was winter when you died.





	You Knew Then

There ain’t no other way to go about starting this.

It was winter when you died.

I gotten better at thinking about that word, “dying.” It ain’t as ugly as it used to be.

It sounds awful silly to write down, when you know all too well when it happened. If there’s any part of you to know anything at all, I mean. I still hain’t figured out whether you’re gone or you ain’t, but it feels nice to act like I have, leastways. I knowed then, and I know now I won’t find out. It most kills me to know that’s the only thing I’ll ever be certain of.

There’s been plenty more winters that laid right over your winter afterwards, somehow. It’s been so long, sometimes I scare myself half to death trying to remember things about you I used to know like the back of my hand. The thoughts get all terrible mixed up and I can’t tell apart a sound from a sight or a smile from a frown. I don’t have any photographs of you to remember you by, but sometimes I reckon it’s for the best. Looking at a sea of black and white that spells out your face ain’t gonna remind me of the exact color of your hair. Staring long and hard at a photo that don’t move ain’t gonna make you come to life or move that particular way you always done; it ain’t gonna run like you when you chased after the steamboat spinning down the river, or swing your arms about like you when you’d talk and talk for hours about all those grand stories you loved so, or come within an inch a hitting me right in the face by accident, neither.

I reckon it’s for the best, indeed. I bet I’d see you in your stocky, stiff Sunday best and just know, right down to my bones, that you was griping about the heat or wishing you could scratch an itch but you dasn’t move, or the photo’d come out all wrong.

There are things I seen all my life I’m scared I won’t remember, and there are things I seen even less I won’t be able to forget till I die, mostly because they won’t ever let me alone. I seen you laugh near every day, but I seen you cry less and less once we grown some, and warn’t boys anymore, but young men instead. It was like all the tears just went and dried up, but I reckon that was a normal thing for any growing boy. That was why I couldn’t stop thinking about all the times you was sick but alive, but not really, because you wasn’t all there, neither. It was like seeing you, but through a mist, or a fog, and it never cleared until it got so bad you plain disappeared. Sometimes I wonder if the only reason I seen you cry then was because you didn’t even know I, nor anybody else, was really there.

You got so upset so easy them days.

If you spilled food all over yourself trying to eat, you’d get all huffy and bothered and cry. If someone else had to feed that blamed food to you, you’d cry. If none of that blamed food stayed down, you’d cry. Sometimes I reckon you felt like you was standing up high on a chair with a leg just fitten to snap in two, stretching yourself thin reaching out for something nobody else could see, and everytime you’d fall it warn’t no surprise to anyone else but yourself, but it broke your heart all the same.

One time you bust into tears because your Aunt Polly wouldn’t stop hovering over you, and pressing that cold rag on your face, and chattering on to me about how much better you’d gotten the past week or so. Things was starting to look promising, she said, thank the good Lord above, and I just kept on nodding my head, though I could see as plain as day it warn’t true. I think you knowed it, too. “Don’t talk about me like I ain’t here,” you said, and threw the rag right onto the floor. Aunt Polly’s lip went a-quivering something awful just hearing you shout like that, and I got so scared _ she _would cry too, but she blinked away her tears and scolded you and picked up the rag, and went on doing what she pleased, babying you and petting you and talking to me, pretending you never said nothing to begin with.

Yes, sir. There was a whole lot of crying back then, but it warn’t all.

You’re gone now, and sometimes all my soft head can think of is how sad and lonesome you felt, and it’s a shame, because that wasn’t all you was.

You was too many things all at once to try and explain it in just a word or two. You wasn’t all tears and sickness, but you wasn’t all sunshine, neither. You wasn’t perfect, because there ain’t nobody in the world that is. You could be mean when you wanted to be, and reckless and selfish when you didn’t even think to. But you always seemed to mean well anyway, Tom. Everyone’s got their own mistakes, like I said, and their own weaknesses, and I’m sure the great big mess of my own that I made my whole life, over the one you made in your 19 years, could just lay over yours.

You was my best friend. That’s what matters most to me.

You was courageous, and bold, and fitten to come right outta one of your story books as a grand hero. You sure always had the style for it, just like you had a hankering to. There was parts of you that was quieter, and softer around the edges, too. There was parts of you that we didn’t read about in story books often, but I was grateful for them all the same. You was always real giving to me, because you knowed I didn’t have a lot to call my own. I think the first time you called me your comrade, I couldn’t think straight for a good couple of days afterwards.

Back then, when you was still around, and we was side by side, with a whole lot life to look forward to, I didn’t think I’d ever work up the gumption in me to tell you, but maybe I didn’t have to.

It was a week before you’d passed, and St. Petersburg was all covered in snow, and Sid he come poking around the Widow’s, asking for me to come right away, because you was asking for me, and just wouldn’t sit still till I come. Now, everyone knowed how bad things had gotten, and woulda leapt up in a hurry to do just about anything for you, bring anything, or anybody you asked for, and I suppose that included me. The more I think about it, the more I come to realize, you probably thought you was dying then, and asking to see me, so’s you could get a proper send off. It warn’t it, though, not in the end. Things never go down as big and stylish as they do in the books. It’s alright that you enjoyed them, Tom, truly, or even if you believed in them with your whole heart. It’s just that to me, there warn’t no such thing as grand send offs, or nice, neat goodbyes where everything is said and done and you can shut your eyes and be at peace forevermore.

Either way, I come running back with Sid to your home, and sit right next to you in bed. I felt my heart sink down amongst my others when I saw you finally, though. I wondered if you had actually gone and asked for me, or if you was just blabbering nonsense with my name thrown in a couple times. But it didn’t matter to me none, because I wanted us to be together anyway.

I sure thought you was gonna die, right then and there. There are things I hate to forget, and this is one I can’t, no matter how hard I try. You looked like maybe you was already dead, except you was still breathing, all quiet and ragged-like, and your brows was knit together, like you was thinking hard about something, or your body was aching all over.

I grabbed your hand then, and squeezed it real gentle. Your eyes peeled open, and you looked at me, or looked through me, I ain’t sure, but you said my name anyway, soft and quiet. I’m starting to get old and gray and wrinkled now, but I still smile to think about that name you thought up for me when we was still boys. Hucky. No one ever thought to give me a nickname of my very own before you.

I didn’t know what to say back, so I just started to cry, because it come over me then, hard.

Things was drawing to a close, and there warn’t a single thing I could do to stop it, or save you from it.

I reckoned I had gotten so used to the thought of you eventually passing, that so much time passed and went on by, I thought it might never happen at all. But I knowed then, for sure, even if I had seen you most everyday since you caught the sick. I don’t know why. That’s just how people is, I suppose. They can stare at hardness and sadness and mighty cruel things for such a long time it becomes easier to pretend they don’t exist, until they ain’t there at all. And then, when they come rushing back finally, they hit a body so hard you near pass out from the terribleness of it all.

I was faced with an awful thing then. I had to be true with myself and look at it like it was: there was gonna come a time, real soon, where you’d turn and leave, heading off into God knows where, and never look back. I’d never see you again. They’d shut you up in a wooden box and I’d never be able to take in your face, or your eyes, or your smile, or the way your nose scrunched up when you laughed, or the ringing sound of it in my ears, or anything lovely of yours again. I saw it, just like I seen it when my mam died, I seen that wooden box and got so close to puking I had to reel back for a little while.

I didn’t care for none of it anymore. I didn’t care if you didn’t have anything to give back to me that I wanted to give to you, because I knowed you couldn’t, not even if you wanted to. And even if you just plumb didn’t want to, I would’ve understood. So, I leaned over, and I kissed your forehead. It was all damp with your sweat, so I pushed back the hair that stuck to it, and kissed it again, and that was all I could manage. I probably got it even wetter with my tears, so I’m sorry about that, Tom.

When I leaned back, I saw you, and you saw me. Did you see me? I’m certain you did, because there was a clumsy, clueless kinder look on your face, one that didn’t seem to suit the likes of Tom Sawyer. But then it all come together, all the pieces knit together in your head, I reckon.

I knowed then. _ You _knowed it, well enough. There are plenty of things I wonder about, but this ain’t one of them. Maybe you had knowed it for a little while, I ain’t sure. But what I knowed then, was that you did too.

Well, you didn’t say a single word to me. You didn’t cry neither, like I sorter worried you might. You just ran your thumb along my hand and held it a little tighter and smiled a kind little smile. It warn’t too often I got to see a small smile like that on you, because everything about you seemed to have to be so big and loud all the time. But not now.

Then you fell asleep, and I stayed with you the entire day through, though I warn’t sure you was with me or not.

All I could think about was that you didn’t look as surprised or pettish or scared to just _ know_, the way I was more expecting you to. You smiled, instead, and I’ll never know why, but maybe that’s alright.

You didn’t die that night, like we was all worked up you might. You was strong. Like I said, you held out for a little more’n a week. I won’t talk about it much, because your leaving didn’t say much itself, neither. I warn’t there when it happened. Your aunt said you was breathing weak around noon, and by the time she come up to bring you your supper, you was gone.

As much as I love you, as much as I reckon a feller can, I don’t think there’s another person in the whole world who can hold a candle to that woman. She never stopped, Tom, not till she died herself.

It’s all strange business. Dying, that is.

You was here one second, and then gone the next.

I ran so far ahead of you, I ended up not being able to see you at all. I know now you was just a kid then, just like I was.

There are sometimes when I think a whole lot about you, and other times when you just come to mind, bubbling to the surface, because I see something or someone that brings you there. The past couple of weeks have been the first. I been feeling real anxious to write about it lately, and I’m sure you’d be happy to know it.

There ain’t much more I have the strength to write, not about this, leastways. But I feel like shouting it from the rooftops sometimes, that I’m glad to have been your comrade. We might see each other, sooner than later. I suppose it depends on whether I live to 100 or not. I doubt it. We’ll see.

Yours truly,

Huck Finn

**Author's Note:**

> i just had this idea sitting in the back of my mind for a long time and finally word vomited it onto a word document in a single night.  
feedback is greatly appreciated, as always!


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